


don’t run your mouth (or they’ll drown you)

by antukini



Series: sleepy does camp nano april 2020 [27]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Meetings, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Pre-Relationship, madara meets tobirama at the river instead of hashirama, madara mistakes tobirama for a kami and you know what that's fair, they cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:40:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23895457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antukini/pseuds/antukini
Summary: “Who’s there?” they speak. The kami opens their eyes and—Madara is shocked into stillness with the sight of the kami’s enchanting eyes.Red, red,red. Red a shade brighter than the sharingan.Gorgeous.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama & Uchiha Madara, Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: sleepy does camp nano april 2020 [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686649
Comments: 17
Kudos: 502





	don’t run your mouth (or they’ll drown you)

**Author's Note:**

> prompt fill for anonymous on tumblr who requested: How about a prompt where Tobi meets Madara at the river instead of Hashirama after Itama died and was blowing off steam by training and Madara just happened to walk by?
> 
> everybody say i love you anon
> 
> i love this au so much hhh

Madara faintly hears the rush of the Naka’s waters as he trudges along towards his private spot on the riverside. He walks on shinobi-silent feet more out of habit than conscious effort. His breaths are quiet as he watches the sway of the trees and the increasing number of rocks as he nears the river.

He thinks about why he wanted to get some peace and quiet in the first place. It’s been only a few days since his elder brother’s death. After Izuna, Kou was the brother he felt closest to. Madara still distinctly remembers Kou holding his smaller hand as they went to the river to swim and teach him to skip rocks in those increasingly rare times when Kou wasn’t training.

Then all that came crashing down when Kou fell in a battle against the Hagoromo. Bloodthirsty bastards betrayed their treaty with them just to spill more blood.

Madara lets out a quiet sigh. He misses him.

Madara’s dragged out of his thoughts as he hears violent splashing as he nears.

_Is someone drowning?!_

All past melancholy thoughts fall away and he rushes past the brush only to abruptly halt when his eyes land on a figure in the middle of the river. 

No way.

Is that… a _kami_?!

Eyes closed, short hair pure white, skin pale, and face set in a fearsome scowl, an ethereal entity on shimmering water is illuminated by the light of the noon sun. They look like a child made from moonlight, oversized looking clothing that isn’t even slightly wet making the kami look even smaller.

Madara immediately hides behind a conveniently placed tree trunk to watch the scowling kami angrily moving through what looks similar to a kata, like a shinobi dancing with suiton. The kami twists and turns like the water it controls, both fluid and forceful, contradictory but it flows as well as the river the kami stands on. As they danced, the kami effortlessly forms multiple shapes with the water, making it rise and fall and tremble, a god with liquid clay. 

It takes Madara’s breath away. He doesn’t know how long he stands there, eyes wide and stupefied, trying to take in as much of the display as if he could stamp it to his eyelids if he stared hard and long enough.

The effortless display of control and power ends with the kami forming a water dragon that rips through the air above and dives back into the Naka and the kami stills, the rushing water of the river disconcertingly undisturbed as the kami stands on it.

“Who’s there?” they speak. The kami opens their eyes and—

Madara is shocked into stillness with the sight of the kami’s enchanting eyes.

Red, red, _red_. Red a shade brighter than the sharingan. _Gorgeous_.

“ _Who’s there?_ ” The kami snarls, whirling in the direction of Madara’s hiding place with a pointed glare, the waters under their feet trembling.

Madara scrambles out of hiding, unwilling to displease such a kami who could send him into a watery grave with nary an effort.

_Be respectful, Madara. Don’t run your mouth or they’ll drown you._

Madara bows deeply and speaks in his best keigo. “This one did not wish to disturb you.”

The water suddenly stops trembling as if the kami was shocked into stillness. “Wh— I’m not a _kami_. Stop speaking like— like _that_.”

Madara almost gives himself whiplash with how fast he bent his neck to look at what he thought was a kami, body still set in a bow. “...Um.”

“Get up from there, fool.” The not-kami crosses his skinny arms in front of his scrawny chest, a condescending expression on his face.

How rude! “You look younger than me! How dare you speak to me like that!” Madara’s face scrunches into a scowl, hands balling into fists at his sides.

The kid sniffs haughtily. “Your age does not indicate your intelligence so you can go ahead and shut your mouth.”

How is such a scrawny kid so damn smart? Madara doesn’t think he knew such advanced words at the age the kid is. An unbidden grin stretches across his face.

“I’m Madara,” he introduces himself.

The white-haired kid stares intensely with red eyes seemingly piercing through his skin and seeing straight into his soul, dissecting him to his very core until he finds what wants.

“Tobirama,” he offers, eyes cautious but less so than before.

They end up talking. Madara asks Tobirama why he was practicing suiton so violently.

“Both of my younger brothers are dead. Child-killing squads slaughtered them.” Tobirama’s voice is quiet but it doesn’t entirely hide the anger in his voice, blazing red eyes glaring into the rushing water. “My last brother almost got into a fight with my father and I had to mediate. I came here to calm myself down.”

Madara understands that experience; he’d lost two younger siblings to those despicable squads as well. He decides to share after a moment of tense silence. “...I get that. Three of my brothers died because of this stupid war.”

The air between them eases somewhat.

“Adults are stupid,” Tobirama huffs. “They make these treaties and pacts they don’t even follow, they lie and betray, and are surprised when things fall back into war. They sacrifice children for the sake of their selfishness.” Tobirama picks up a flat rock beside him and throws it. The rock skips the water and lands perfectly on the other side.

“...I don’t want my younger brother to grow up only to end up dead.” Madara mumbles, picking up a rock to skip. It only finishes halfway to the other side. Madara clicks his tongue.

“I don’t want my anija to die for this foolish war either. We should make an alliance or something. Maybe even build a place where everyone can stop fighting.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.”

They quietly pass the time like that, passing ideas on how they could stop the war and keep their brothers alive. Then Tobirama critiques his rock skipping technique and they devolve into bickering until sunset.

“I have to go. Anija will be wailing for me,” Tobirama says in a lull in their bickering, looking at the setting sun painting the skies in warm reds and oranges.

“My little brother too. My dad might yell at me if I go home too late.” Madara gazes into the warm-colored sky then glances at the white-haired kid beside him, seeing warm colors illuminating white strands and pale skin.

Tobirama stands, patting at his clothing. “See you then.” He nods at Madara then waterwalks to the opposite bank. And with a parting glance, disappears into the trees.

Madara raises a hand. “See you.” Then he walks home.

-

Time passes. Seasons come and go. The years flow by.

They keep meeting. They talk. They grow. They cultivate a dream where their brothers don’t have to sacrifice themselves for the sake of warring adults who could never stick to their oaths. They concoct plans—most of them organized by Tobirama, the anal little shit.

They confirm their suspicions of the other’s birth clans when Madara is followed by his brother and Tobirama doesn’t arrive like he usually did, having sensed someone with chakra similar to Madara’s tailing the older boy. Tobirama tells him the truth, trusting Madara to not betray him.

He was right to do so.

(Tobirama skips a rock across the river and speaks, voice nonchalant, “You’re Uchiha, aren’t you?”

Madara tenses, expecting a fight but Tobirama is forcibly still calm. Madara breathes out. Let this not break them, Amaterasu have mercy. “...Yeah.”

Tobirama nods, fortifying himself. “I’m a Senju.”

“Oh.” Madara breathes.

They don’t talk much more after that, their mutual trust firm, continuing their rock skipping which Madara still loses. After which they bicker as usual.)

They find out more about each other.

Madara finds out about Tobirama’s soft spot for children when he sees him playing with children he’d apparently helped on a mission outside the village as Madara was passing through for a mission of his own. Madara finds out about Tobirama’s penchant for jutsu creation and seal crafting when he finds the other practicing—developing, he’d been told later—jutsu he’d never seen before.

Tobirama finds out about his falcons when he finds him at their spot in the river praising a falcon on his arm. Tobirama finds out about his embarrassing inability to pee with someone behind him, that had been a hilarious day. Tobirama finds out about his love for inarizushi and made the effort to bring him some when the occasion presents itself.

(Madara cautiously agrees to bring Tobirama’s anija into their meetings. Izuna believes in their father’s teachings about the Senju far too much for it to be safe. He opts for subtly changing his mind about the Senju instead. He doesn’t want to fight Izuna on this.

He’s bewildered to find out how different the Senju brothers are when the brown-haired boy tries tackling Tobirama in a hug which he expertly avoids but relents to eventually, Tobirama rolling his eyes for the entire endeavor.

Madara immediately gets caught in a tight hug when Tobirama’s brother sets his sights on him. He thinks he glimpsed the Pure Lands in those oxygen-deprived minutes of his life.)

They meet on the battlefield amidst blood and falling clansmen. Their trust is tested when they fight each other’s brother. But they make it through, meeting after every battle and making sure the other is alright.

(As viciously as Tobirama fights, he never goes for the fatal blow. He leaves his enemies incapacitated, some he even leaves precise injuries to leave them unfit for war. He does as much as he can to not be driven to kill.

Madara appreciates him all the more for it.)

They don’t notice it but as they grew into their own—scrawny frames filling out with muscle, too-long limbs as now strong as could be, faces losing the plumpness of a child’s and , awkward bodies finally comfortable and confident—they slowly but surely fall for the other, admiring each other’s strength and beauty when they’re across the battlefield and when they’re close to each other on the bank of the Naka with the rushing water as their witness.

Their fathers die in battles outside of clashes between the Uchiha and the Senju, surprisingly.

Madara and Hashirama take their positions as clan heads and agree to a ceasefire not long before that. Both Madara and the Senju brothers had been slowly influencing their clansmen’s views on peace over the years, making the negotiations much easier to go through than it would have had they not.

They broker peace.

Madara is shaking Hashirama’s hand across the negotiating table over their finalized peace treaty when he sees Tobirama looking intensely into Madara’s eyes, much like that searching look he gave him before he had introduced himself to who he thought was a kami so many years ago. When Tobirama finds what he’s looking for, his lips quirk up into an almost imperceptibly small, gorgeous smile.

That’s when Madara finally figures out he’s in love.

(A lot of flailing happens before they finally get together and even after that fiasco the flailing continues. Tobirama loves him for it.)

**Author's Note:**

> the tumblr post of this prompt fill is [here](https://antukini.tumblr.com/post/616660242669895680/how-about-a-prompt-where-tobi-meets-madara-at-the)
> 
> bOOM and that’s my take on this au, lads
> 
> i could’ve made this longer but uh braincells went lol
> 
> [tumblr](https://antukini.tumblr.com/)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/antukini)


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